


picked apart every piece of me (and missed the point entirely)

by WashiEaglewings



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, KH Secret Santa 2019, for now, until Nomura strikes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-03
Updated: 2020-01-03
Packaged: 2021-02-27 09:02:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22094536
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WashiEaglewings/pseuds/WashiEaglewings
Summary: The most important part of the battle is the prep. Kairi trains for the final battle.A Secret Santa gift for the lovelymaxxmerch!
Relationships: Axel & Kairi (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi & Riku (Kingdom Hearts), Kairi & Sora (Kingdom Hearts)
Kudos: 19





	picked apart every piece of me (and missed the point entirely)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [maxxmerch @ twitter](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=maxxmerch+%40+twitter).



When Riku finds her on the front lawn in front of Yen Sid’s tower, she only has one question: “Anything I should know about Lea before I’m stuck in the void with him?”

He laughs, gesturing to the small stairs leading to the front door. She follows him to sit, her eyes drifting upward. The stars up here are brilliant, shining between thin ribbons of aurora-light. She doesn’t recognize any of the constellations, which makes sense--the Destiny Islands are probably far, far away from here.

He chuckles, a soft sound. “I’ll make sure he doesn’t—”

“You better not finish that sentence with ‘go too hard on me,’” she says. 

Riku pauses. 

“Because I can do this,” Kairi says. “You were the one who gave me the Keyblade in the first place, so really, this whole thing is _your_ fault.”

“I didn’t say you couldn’t,” he says gently, and offers a hand. It surprises her; in all the years she’s known him he’s never been one for physical affection like this. Not one to look a gift horse in the mouth, she takes it, marvelling for a moment at the rough calluses on his palm and the ends of his fingers. 

If she’s going into a timeless void, will she have the chance to develop these too?

“I wish I could be there for you, is all.”

“Someone has to go save the missing Wielders,” Kairi says. “Once I have some time to learn what I’m supposed to be doing, I’ll be there at your side.” She pauses, looking down at their entwined hands. “If you and Sora’ll let me.”

He squeezes gently. “You’re already strong, Kairi. Having a Keyblade just… makes you stronger in a different way.”

Riku means well; it’s the only reason she’s able to keep her shoulders from tightening. “This ‘different way’ better be enough to let me kick your butt.”

“In your dreams,” he laughs.

In her dreams she follows them on their journeys—with Sora to the countless worlds he’s visited, and probably several new ones none of them could dream of; with Riku to the dark places of the universe to seek the missing Lights. But instead she watches Riku fly off with the King in a flash of star-shard light, and leaves before Sora even has the chance to know she’s been here. Yen Sid is able to spirit her away to Merlin’s house in Radiant Garden with a simple flick of his wrist, and suddenly the soft blues and golds have given way to dusky brown walls and an explosion of textbooks and beakers.

“Remind me to tell you—ah, you’ve arrived!” The long-bearded wizard turns from the tall, fiery-haired figure perched on a chair in the corner to greet her, his eyes warm and round behind his oversized glasses. “I am the great wizard Merlin, and—well, I suppose you’ve met our friend Lea.”

They stare at each other for a moment; Kairi is the first to turn away, rubbing her wrist. “In a way,” she says.

“Right, you’re both here, no sense in wasting time. This right here,” he says, pulling an amber pendant off the nearest coffee table, “is where you’ll be training.”

It’s beautiful, set in silver to show off the fiery gleam of the jewel. But… “It’s a necklace,” Kairi says slowly.

“It sounds weirder than it is,” Lea says, straightening in his chair without leaving it.

“So long as someone stays inside, you’ll be taken to a place where time does not pass as normal. This is a great opportunity to learn and hone your skills for the great battle against Master Xehanort—bit of a specialty of mine, time and space magic, ever since I was a young lad. You see back in my day…”

“Mister… uh. Merlin? Sir? Is there anything we need to know about this place?”

“Hm? Ah, yes. You should have everything you need, but if for some reason you need my assistance with anything, just shout my name and I’ll speak to you through, well, through the pendant. And if I need anything from you, well, you’ll hear me loud and clear!”

She doesn’t even see the wand appear, just the white-tip moving through the air as the pendant levitates before them. It shimmers for a moment in gold and green before a portal opens, large enough to step through. Even several feet away she can feel the wind on her face, and pauses.

“Easy as stepping into the next room,” Lea says, finally out of his chair. He casts one last look at her, brow furrowing for a moment, before disappearing into the light.

As soon as he’s vanished completely, she turns to Merlin and asks, “This is safe, right?”

“My dear, there’s nothing for you to worry about. I’ll be checking in on you every so often to make sure things all go according to plan. But if you do need me—”

“Call your name. Right.” She pauses. “If the amulet only works when someone’s in there… who was in there before Lea?”

“My good friend Archimedes of course! It’s become something of a second home to him since I conjured it up last week. You may see him flitting around while you train, nothing to worry about.”

When Merlin gives her his hand and helps her into the portal, she has no intention of coming back out until she’s ready to defend herself.

* * *

She’s enamored with the place at first—how could she not, with the sunset burning gold over the stretched horizon and pulling long shadows between the tall trees? It reminds her of the few days she’d spent in Twilight Town; there’s no salty tang to the air, this far away from the ocean, just the scent of the pines and the wind that sneaks up on her like an old friend.

It’s fine for the first day or two. Or, what she thinks are days. Enough time passes that she realizes it’s passing her completely—she doesn’t tire, has no need of food or drink, and despite the hard whacks of training swords Merlin had insisted they train with no bruises form. 

A hard rap of wood on her shoulder demands her attention. “Stop spacing out, kid.”

Axel—Lea— _whatever_ his name is—has no need of these things either, and he hates it in a way Kairi doesn’t know to. He’s a strange teacher, prowling around her like a cat toying with a canary, offering barbed words and guiding blows in the same swift movement. Lea, after all, is only here to learn how to wield a Keyblade; Kairi has to learn how to fight from the very beginning.

She rolls her shoulder and jabs forward, the blow caught on the edge of Lea’s training sword. The _thunk_ of the wood spirits her back to the Islands of years ago, when Sora and Riku and Tidus would trade blows for victory and she and Selphie would cheer for them. She blinks and Lea is there in front of her, smirking as he bends to catch her ankle. Suddenly she’s on the ground and _wow_ , dirt is so much harder than sand.

“I thought you were here to learn how to fight?” he teases, his green eyes gleaming.

She grits her teeth, her veins itching beneath her skin. She scrambles back to an upright position and rushes him, only to have him bend around her blow. “If you’d just stay still!” she hisses, throwing a fist outward—

It catches him in the shoulder. Not enough to send him flying, but enough to give him pause. “What’re you gonna do, punch Xehanort to submission?”

She growls, and her fingers are on _fire_ and there’s a weird pressure behind her eyes, a yearning for a release.

“Angry yet?”

She’s _burning_. Her arm whips forward and suddenly there’s a ringing in her ears, and without warning a flash of lightning sparks from her hand to Lea’s feet. The heat fades from her fingers, and the headache fades. Lea’s bewildered face doesn’t, and he looks down at the tiny mark on the ground and up to her face in rapid succession.

“I’m so—I don’t know what happened, I just, it—”

“Don’t apologize for that,” Lea says, and finally chuckles. “That’s the whole point of this training, isn’t it?”

“I…” She looks back down at her hands. “Guess you’re right.”

Lea looks down at the wooden sword in his hand, then flings it to the ground. Fire flickers between his fingers as he grins. “Wanna do it again?”

Kairi takes a deep breath, wiggling her fingers. “I… yeah.” She grins and kicks her wooden sword to the side.

Magic feels good. Natural, in a way the blunt hits of the wooden sword hadn’t. Golden sparks fly from her palm into a glowing ball, which Lea dodges with a laugh before rapping her again on the shoulder with his own training weapon. 

“Now don’t hold back—” he starts, and then stops. His face falls, his brow furrows, and just like that any spark of fight in him has faded.

“Did I do something wrong?” she asks.

“No! No.” He shakes his head. “I’m seeing things, I think. Just need a break. We’re allowed to take breaks in here, you know.”

“I don’t feel tired,” she says. If anything she feels pumped, with too much energy running through her limbs to keep completely still. “You’re sure nothing’s wrong?”

“I…” He throws his sword on the ground and sighs, running a hand through his hair. “Don’t know?”

Lea isn’t Axel, not in the way that Namine and Roxas aren’t Kairi and Sora; more like how she’s not the little girl who fell from the sky anymore. There’s enough of him to keep Kairi from completely letting her guard down, but not enough to not feel herself soften a little bit.

“If you ever want to talk about it,” Kairi says, “I hear I’m a good listener.”

He looks up at her and chuckles. “Maybe someday I’ll take you up on that.”

* * *

She’s mostly forgotten Merlin’s promise to “check in on them” when two gunshots ring loud through the air and Leon walks into their clearing.

The immediate aftermath after Hollow Bastion is still fuzzy; she briefly remembers a few stray conversations with Leon and his friends, but not in fine detail. Mostly she knows him from the crazy stories that Sora had shared in that brief halcyon period between the World that Never Was and the King’s letter in a bottle—a “warrior and a worrier,” Sora had called him, “he was one of the first people I met on my adventure! Had me flat on my back in two seconds flat ‘cause he was super strong.”

(Her battle with him lasts three seconds, and Kairi isn’t sure if it’s because she’s stronger at sixteen than Sora had been at fourteen or if Leon’s taking it easy on her. But he offers a hand and lifts her up from the ground, a hint of a smile on his face so familiar that makes her ache for Riku.)

Leon’s a calmer teacher than Lea, slow and meticulous in his lessons. The Keyblade is many things, he tells her, but it is first and foremost an extension of the soul made into an unforgiving weapon. He guides her through sword stances, is quick to correct her posture. If she could form bruises in this place, her ankles and wrists would be more berries than cream.

“You could be safe with the other Princesses,” Leon says quietly, when she’s sprawled on the ground trying to remember what _at rest_ feels like; judging by Leon’s stiff shoulders, he’s forgotten such a thing long ago. “Why come here?”

“Sora and Riku have saved me so many times,” she says, pausing to put her next words to sound. “Saved the _worlds._ They’re searching for the lost Lights, for the power of Awakening… I feel better when I’m doing something productive, you know? This seems like the best way to do that.”

Leon says nothing, leaning back against a thick tree.

“That… wasn’t a trick question, was it?”

He reloads his Gunblade, wiping a smudge off the barrel before turning to her. “No,” Leon responds. “Just a normal question.”

She’s not quite sure how to respond to that.

“I need to check the town perimeter soon, but I have time for one last set. You good to continue?”

She stands with a sigh and a nod. The wooden sword feels too big in her hands; considering how much she’s used the thing in the last… well, however long she’s been in this half-world, she’d hoped for a bit of give, a few dips in the wood where her fingers have worried the surface. There’s no such thing. It feels wrong in her grip, and she tries to readjust.

Leon notices, because of _course_ he does. “Have you tried summoning your Keyblade yet?”

“On and off,” she says. “But I figured I had to learn how to fight before I could use it. Was that not right?”

“It’s sound logic. Drop your sword.” She does. “Sora explained it to me once, how it’s like a… heat in your hand. Something you tug on in the back of your brain. Do you feel anything like that?”

“I…” She closes her eyes. There’s something sizzling behind her fingertips, but she’d chalked that up to unspent magic. Was that her Keyblade instead? She extends her hand, because it feels right and she swears she’s seen someone do that before, and as she thinks it the white necklace grows warm over her heart.

It’s a _rush_ , that’s the only way to describe it—like the tide sneaking up on her, threatening to pull her under. One moment she’s breathing and empty-handed, and the next there’s energy pooling into something solid in her grip. She nearly bows under the unexpected weight of it but catches herself, opens her eyes to the swirls of blue and pink over a golden blade. 

“We might make a warrior of you yet,” Leon says, and raises his weapon.

Kairi lifts hers in response.

* * *

Destiny’s Embrace is warmer in her hands than she remembers. Which, granted, she doesn’t remember a lot of the finer details of her time in the World that Never Was—mostly relief in finding her boys again, the rising fear of seeing them fight so viciously before her and the door shutting, the sinking relief in seeing them crash into their home sea.

Even dismissed she can feel it pulsing behind her eyes, like a second heartbeat. It’s alien and comforting all at once, and she wonders if Riku and Sora still feel their Keyblades like this or if they’ve grown used to it. Or maybe it’s a weapon thing? She looks over at Lea— _Axel_ , he’d asked her just a few minutes ago to call him that—and asks, “Does it feel different from your chakrams?”

His sea salt ice cream is dribbling onto the grass at his feet, though he hardly seems to notice. “They’re totally different weapons.”

“I mean,” Kairi says, pausing to lick her own ice cream. “...I don’t know what I mean.”

“My chakrams felt like an extension of my arms, but I’ve been using things like them for years.” Axel pauses, brow furrowing in thought. “The Keyblade feels… I don’t know, more like _me._ Like a part of my soul. Which seems kind of crazy,” he says, rubbing a hand through his hair.

“Not really,” she says.

She pulls Destiny’s Embrace into being just to prove she can, just because she still can’t quite believe it. The pulsing warmth of it is already becoming a comfort, a badge of honor. She kind of wishes her boys had been here to see it; Riku would have smiled and Sora would have jumped up and down in excitement. She thinks. Maybe.

“Munny for your thoughts?” Axel calls out to her.

She dismisses Destiny’s Embrace just to prove she can. Her hand feels empty without it, somehow. “It’s nothing.”

“Well if it ever becomes _something_ … you know, you could tell me. Only if you wanted to, though.”

It’s her own words thrown back at her. She laughs and takes a bite of her ice cream. “You’re being awfully nice about this.”

“You’ll have to be more specific than that.”

“Training with me. Why?”

“Feels good. Familiar. Not that I liked training and going on missions all the time back when I was a Nobody, but… it’s the routine of the thing, I guess.”

“Comforting,” she says. “I get that. It’s why I write my letters. I used to write to Sora when he was away for that year—even when I didn’t remember who he was.”

“Because of Namine,” he says simply. Matter-of-fact.

“It all turned out in the end,” Kairi finishes. “But sitting down and writing things out, just so they were outside of my head… it helped a lot. Maybe in the way fighting does for you.”

“I think you’re making it a little more complicated than it needs to be,” Axel says, taking a huge bite. “Ohhh, brain freeze. Didn’t think that’d happen here.”

For a moment she doesn't mind that this ice cream doesn’t melt in her hands. Kairi laughs.

* * *

The moment passes. She cuts her hair so _something_ changes in this place.

* * *

The whole Restoration Committee has decided to take turns training the two newest Keyblade Wielders. She’s glad for it: she likes Axel well enough, but they’ve spent enough time here for them to begin knowing each other’s moves. New opponents means new fighting styles to learn, new ways to counter and move her body. Riku had said something really smart about this once, and she wishes she had listened to him.

Aerith helps her finetune her magic, and teaches her Cure spells strong enough to leave her lightheaded after. Yuffie teachers her dodging, how to move her body _with_ the flow of enemy attacks rather than _against_ them. Tifa tries to teach her punching, which goes disastrously but gets her to laugh about it afterward and that might be just as important as fighting. Cid sits her down and goes over the fundamentals of item use, and her head swims with facts and statistics long after he’s screamed for Merlin to “get me _out_ of this gotdamn hellhole already!”

She and Axel take it all in stride. He’d been an efficient fighter before, but his time focusing on the Keyblade has given him a few new tricks—mainly the ability to transform his blade back and forth into his familiar chakrams, a revelation he doesn’t stop crowing about for ages. Kairi’s endurance builds, and she almost lasts a minute tag teaming between Leon and Yuffie. It’s improvement, faster than she could have expected.

It’s not enough.

So when she hears movement in the trees she readies Destiny’s Embrace, expecting Yuffie’s shuriken or a blast of Fira from Aerith. Instead she gets—

“Leon said there’d be treasure involved if we helped!”

“Doubt we’ll find any treasure here.”

“Let’s be professional for once—”

“We’re _totally_ professional _all the time,_ Yuna—oh, there they are!”

Three very tiny fairies, no bigger than her hands, floating in front of her.

“Well, one of them,” the one on the left says, a scruffy-haired blonde with a sly smile that reminds her of Selphie.

“Firebrand somewhere around here?” asks the one in black on the right.

“Uhhhhh,” Kairi starts. 

“He probably needed some time alone, girls,” says the third, the brunette in the center—maybe the leader, with the stares she gets from her companions? “But you’re here!” she cheers, grabbing Kairi’s pinky and shaking. “We’re the Gullwings, and Leon said we could help train you!”

“He wanted to come ‘supervise,’” the blonde says, air-quoting the last word, “but we said that was silly because we’re _totally_ capable of helping you train! Aren’t we, Paine?”

“Yeah.”

“But that’s Paine, I’m Riku— _R-i-k-k-u_ , I guess, I’ve never had anyone share my name before—”

“And I’m Yuna,” the leader says, bowing slightly to her. “You’re Kairi, right?”

“Uhhhhhhhh.”

“I’m gonna take that as a yes.” Rikku grins. “Is this where you train? Lea had another spot he liked to visit the last time we were here, but I think it’s far away from this place.”

The only place she can think of is next to a small lake with a suspicious number of scorch marks; she’s not going to suggest this to these Gullwings, though. “Yeah, this is it. Just some flat grass and, uh, some trees.”

“Perfect. Let’s get started.”

She follows them because it feels like the only thing to do, watches them as they group together in the center and… strike a pose? “So the rules are very simple,” Yuna says, and Kairi shifts her grip on Destiny’s Embrace. “Knock the three of us out and you win.”

“Not treasure. Just bragging rights,” Rikku says.

“But you have to catch us first,” Paine says.

“Hang on,” Kairi starts, but before she can get another word out they vanish right before her eyes.

She raises Destiny’s Embrace in a ready position, already feeling the hum of magic winding up the staff of the blade. Blizzard would cover a wider area, but they seemed tiny, maybe one good hit with Fire or Thunder would be enough—

Something kicks her in the back of the head. Kairi yelps and swings her blade, hitting nothing and earning only a giddy peel of laughter.

It goes only like this for several rounds: Kairi swivelling back and forth, only catching air with her swings and slashes and spells, the Gullwings laughing at her as they dart on the corners of her vision.

“I didn’t sign up for this!”

“Well, you kind of did.” She catches Paine zooming to her, and raises Destiny’s Embrace to block her blow at the last second. She’s too slow to retaliate with anything more than a growl, but there’s a satisfied gleam in Paine’s eyes before she zooms out of sight.

“You think the bad guys are going to fight fair like Leon and his gang?” Rikku teases. She narrowly twists away from a burst of Blizzard, shivering slightly as she flicks Kairi’s nose with her boot. “That’s what we’re teaching you!”

“How to regret everything that’s brought me to this moment?” Kairi huffs under her breath.

“How to win anyway,” Yuna says, and readies a tiny ball of light.

Kairi retaliates with an orb of her own, sends it sailing—sends another, and another, until the whole clearing is filled with them. She sees one hit Yuna on the shoulder, enough to knock the pink fairy off course a bit; she hears another hit Rikku, she _thinks,_ judging by the squeal of surprise and the too-familiar dull thud of a body hitting the dirt. Down but not knocked out, not yet. Just a well-aimed Thunder—

“Think again,” Paine says, drawing a very tiny sword that Kairi wants kept _far away_ from her eyes.

One long swipe of her Keyblade calls forth a gust of wind—of _Wind_ , she corrects herself, grins as she watches Paine sent skyward. Rikku is still slow to get up, so Kairi sends a Blizzard to pin Rikku’s left wing and leg in solid ice.

“One down,” Kairi mutters. She looks to see Paine furiously beating her black wings to right herself. She’d only meant it to be a glance, but the momentary pause is enough for Yuna’s spell to catch on her right shoulder. Another Wind soars from the tip of her Keyblade but Yuna evades, drawing a tiny staff and thrusting. She catches it on the flowered teeth of Destiny’s Embrace, seeps thunder into her weapon, swipes hard and up. Yuna’s thrown back by painted steel, and Paine is caught in the overspill of the magic. Both of them fall to the ground, groaning.

For three delicious, victorious seconds, Kairi stands with her head held high and a smile on her face.

“I don’t know why Leon was so paranoid,” Rikku says, still struggling under her ice. “She seems fine.”

Then the world catches back up to them, and her stomach drops. “What do you mean?”

“It’s nothing,” Yuna says, as Paine flies weakly forward to melt the ice of her partner. “Leon’s paranoid about _everything_. You fought well.”

“He didn’t think I was fine?” Kairi says, ignoring Yuna’s praise to whip her head between the three of them. “Like, a good fighter?”

“Fighting takes time to master,” Paine says simply. “You’re getting better from what we’ve heard from the others, but if you’re going up against this… Xee-nurt—”

“Xehanort,” Rikku corrects.

“Whatever. You could last a few seconds, maybe, until one of your friends came to help. We weren’t even trying super hard.”

Destiny’s Embrace falls away with a flash of light, leaving a hollow weight in her hands. “So this is all… but I…”

“You’re doing really good work,” Yuna says, now hovering up to meet her directly in the eye. “And Leon’s just trying to be careful, you know? To protect the people of Radiant Garden, and all the other worlds. Because if you and your friends fall… well, that’s it for us, isn’t it?”

Bile rises from her stomach; her hands shake. She turns away from Yuna, from all of them, and starts walking away. Very quickly her strides become longer, faster, and soon the wind is whipping in her face as she runs. Here there’s no burn to her muscles, only tiny spikes of pain as she runs through the trees that she knows from experience won’t leave scars behind. No trace of growth. Just a burning in her cheeks and eyes she knows isn’t from magic.

She doesn’t know where she’s running to, only that she’s running _away_ , and that’s good enough. Kairi comes to a stop by a tall rock that stretches up toward the sky, and figures this is a good enough place to curl up and cry for a bit. The kiss of the cool shadowed stone against her neck—newly exposed with her new haircut, _new look new me, won’t Sora and Riku be so surprised_.

Ha. Maybe impressed when she doesn’t immediately die on that battlefield, but only for a moment. No wonder they hadn’t wanted to take her along. She can beat a few fairies and block a few bullets. So what.

Crying feels the same here, the burning build of it. A relief.

Minutes are hours here. She doesn’t know how much time passes before she hears someone approach, and the relieved sigh overhead. Of course it’s Axel who finds her, eyes wide and chest heaving, who looms over her. “You okay?”

She furrows her brow and glares up at him.

“No, you’re right, dumb question.” He threads a hand through his hair, rubs his temple with the pads of his fingers. “I heard what happened from the three stooges. For a second I worried you’d asked Merlin to get you the hell out of here.”

She’d forgotten that was even an option. She groans, squeezing her eyes shut and forcing a few more tears down. 

“But I’m glad you’re here. I worried about you.”

“Shouldn’t be. You’d probably be learning faster if I wasn’t here.”

“Don’t put words in my mouth,” Axel says, and comes to a kneel before her. “We're doing as well as we can considering we don't have an _actual_ teacher. You’ve improved a lot in the… well, however long we’ve been here. Probably a few weeks. First to summon your Keyblade, that’s important.”

“Big deal if I can’t fight Xehanort,” she mutters.

“What, you thought you’d come in here for some fancy training to bring down the big bad by yourself?” He laughs, not unkindly. Weird. “Even I’m not aiming that high.”

“You came here to learn how to wield a Keyblade.”

“I _came_ here to get my friends back. Swinging a Keyblade was supposed to help with that.” He sighs, gazing down at the ground. “Get Roxas back, knock some sense into Isa—”

“Isa?”

“Scary man with the blue hair and the—”

“Scar on his face? The one who _also_ kidnapped me?” She scoffs, wiping away tears with the back of her hand. “What’s with you Organization XIII people and kidnapping?”

“First of all, not everyone in the Organization was as good as Saix and I were. And it wasn’t kidnapping, it was… suggestive relocation?”

Kairi glares at him.

“And if we’re being honest, I didn’t drag you into that portal with me. You chose to come along. And _you_ chose to come to this hellhole and learn how to fight from the ground-up. So,” he says, “why are you here?”

She looks away, teasing the ends of her new pleated skirt between her fingers. It must be time, not use, that builds callouses; her hands are as delicate as ever. “To… protect my friends,” she says softly. “To help them instead of—watching them get hurt from the sidelines. I can _do_ something about it now. Maybe not as much as I thought I would, but…”

“Who knows what’ll go down on that battlefield. But, we’re just gonna have to stick together and show the old coot who he’s messing with.”

It’s a nice thought, one that might settle her mind for a few hours. It doesn’t, not quite. But Axel’s looking at her with such a patient, gentle smile on his face that it gives her pause. “You… think I can do this?”

“As much as anyone can do any of this,” Axel says with a shrug. “You may not be the strongest person on that battlefield, but that doesn’t mean you’re not important. Besides, what’re you gonna do now that you’ve put all this training in? Go back home? We need you, kid.”

“M’not a kid.”

“Princess, then?”

She sticks her tongue out at him, and he laughs. And somehow that starts her laughing, too—nothing loud or joyous, but it’s something.

It’s something, the pulsing in the back of her head reminds her.

* * *

But even after a dusty battle against Isa and the black-haired girl who looks so much like her, where she’d stood panting and victorious—even after _dying_ and coming back, Sora’s might and her Light combining to do what should be impossible—that something isn’t enough.

Learning how to cast Thunder isn’t enough to keep Xemnas’s hands on her wrists; all the running and jumping she’d done hadn’t been enough to escape the dark magic that freezes her body and suspends her into the air. Doesn’t stop Master Xehanort from staring at her, his golden eyes gleaming under the ghoulish light of the moonstruck clouds above their heads. 

“I found it curious that the other Princesses of Heart had lost their ranks,” Xehanort says suddenly. The clang of clashing weapons rings distantly below them—Sora and Riku, she prays, come again to save her. Her muscles don’t obey her anymore; no amount of twisting loosens his magic’s hold. “But not you. The Keyblade’s influence, I wonder? Or something else?”

The pulsing throughout her body doesn’t belong to Destiny’s Embrace, which seems far from her reach—it’s a far more ancient magic, one that draws her eyes constantly skyward, past the floating keys that spin lazily around them.

She doesn’t know, and that’s the problem. He doesn’t seem to expect her to, content to monologue for the hell of it. They’re the only ones up on this pillar of stone—Xemnas had disappeared almost immediately after leaving her with Xehanort. 

“Tell me about the boy. The Keyblade’s chosen one.”

She’d rather die than give him a weapon to use against Sora, and lifts her chin up defiantly.

“I hear no Master claimed him, that he learned everything he knows on the road. That his connections to others are his weakness as well as his strength. That he’ll run to you.”

If she could just summon her Keyblade, cast a spell, jump right down that cliff and narrowly avoid breaking her neck—if she could do _anything_ —

“Your name will live on in the stories I will write of this day, little one,” he says. “Forever the life-giving pulse of the world I will create. A fitting end, don’t you think?”

Two pillars of black light shoot into the sky; two more keys join the circling ring. Sora’s scream pierces the night and her heart lurches, equal parts relief and fear.

“The end of the beginning,” Xehanort says, and walks forward with his blade in his hand.

She watches as he summons Kingdom Hearts, as golden light floods over them. It’s immediate, the effect of it on her: her heart stills its jackhammering, her breathing eases, her hands stop curling trying to summon a weapon that won't come. She’s not sure if it’s magic or awe. Maybe both. There’s no more struggling against Xehanort’s invisible bonds, not even as he gestures a hand forward to bring her over the lip of their pillar—not even when Sora starts screaming her name.

 _You require motivation,_ Xehanort tells him, which is foolish. Sora is all motivation: for the love of his friends old and new, for the worlds he’s visited, for promises he’s made and always kept in the end.

The light feels like returning from the dead. Feels like the love of her boys. Feels like an ending.

He’d never given her that charm back after leaving for Yen Sid, had he?

When Xehanort raises his blade, she closes her eyes. Prays to Kingdom Hearts that Sora can do the impossible again.

* * *

She used to wonder what was beyond the horizon line in Destiny Islands. Water spilling out into a dark sky, perhaps, far from the touch of the sun; or a land filled with dragons and magic and swords that stole light from the stars themselves. The old woman who sometimes snuck her bread when she went to market used to say that beyond the horizon was a dip in the earth, and in that dip… well, those who saw were never heard from again, so who really knew?

This endless meeting of sea and sky seems like as sure a fit as any.

She doesn’t know how long she’s here, only that she awakens with Sora’s hands surrounding her and his heart beating wildly against hers. There’s nothing joyous in their meeting, just desperation: his hands pulling her closer to him, her fingers tugging at his hair, their cheeks pressed firmly against cheeks and temples.

Because if he’s here in this Final World— 

“I had to do it to save everyone, to save _you_ , if I didn’t then I couldn’t have lived with myself, do you understand?”

“I could have helped,” she tells him.

“You did, don’t you see? And now I’m helping you.”

“This isn’t helping me.”

“It is, Kairi, listen—I’ll come back from this.”

“Not even _you_ can—”

“But I’ll need you to help me on the other side, okay?”

She pulls away enough to look him in the eyes, to see the clouds reflected in the blues of his iris. _He has ocean eyes,_ her father used to say, reflecting everything back. Right now they’re bright, hopeful, haunting. “Riku would be better,” she says.

“No, it has to be you! It’s your power that can get us through this, not your fighting—which was great, I saw you fighting Xion—”

“You don’t need to—”

“I have faith in you,” he says, and presses something into her palm. “You just have to have faith in yourself. Let your heart guide you. To find me. To help them.”

The thalassa charm.

“A promise, remember?” he asks, and smiles so wide it nearly tears her heart open. “You’ll come back for me?”

“I promise,” she says.

“I know you will.”

When she wakes it’s to a crowd of people murmuring around her. Ansem the Wise is the one to find her, Ienzo is the one to call Riku, and Riku’s the one to hold her when she finally becomes herself again and cries for every star in the sky.

* * *

She becomes human again in her bed in Destiny Islands, with Riku curled protectively around her. Her palm has torn open by worrying the edges of the charm into her skin throughout the night, and the sound of her hissing wakes Riku. His eyes are bloodshot and ringed by dark circles, but they’re focused on her when he asks, “What did you dream about this time?”

It’s been two days; being suspended in time, fighting in war, _dying_ and returning from death, it had kept her body bed-bound and her mind working overtime. “Bright lights in a dark city.” Kairi breathes and green magic fills her veins, closes the cuts. Destiny’s Embrace is a heavy weight in the back of her head again, insistent.

“Not San Fransokyo? I know he sent me pictures there.”

But the neon edging and the nighttime constellations he shows her on his phone aren’t right. She shakes her head. Even with Riku’s steadying hand on her back, she sways when she sits up. “I don’t have a map,” she starts, fiddling with the charm again. “He said to let my heart—”

“Be my guiding key?”

“What? No. Where’d you get that from?”

“Something Mickey says,” Riku mutters.

Find Sora. Help _them_ , whoever _they_ are. But she grabs Riku’s hand and looks right at him, taking a deep breath. “He said to let my heart guide me.”

Destiny’s Embrace appears without her calling for it, startling both of them apart. The tip glows a bright gold, and when she points it toward her dresser a portal opens.

She doesn’t know where to. But she feels the pull of it in her heart, hears Sora laughing in her ears, and shoots out of her bed. Riku’s only steps behind her, still in his nightshirt. “You think…?”

“I’m coming with you,” she says simply.

He doesn’t fight her. Just smiles, and nods. “This time, I’m following you.”

The seconds can’t go fast enough as they into travel clothes, as she steals a spare Potion from her nightstand, as Riku sends a mass-text to the others. 

“Somehow I didn’t think giving you your Keyblade all that time ago would lead to this,” Riku says, holding Braveheart at his side.

There's a lot she hadn't signed up for when she'd accepted the Keyblade. This seems to go beyond the call of duty.

But. Maybe this is the duty all along.

She nods, and steps forward, Riku just seconds behind her.

**Author's Note:**

> Find me on [Twitter](http://twitter.com/awakingdormancy)!


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